Our Friend the Charlatan (1901). George Gissing was an English novelist, who wrote twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. Lancelot Speed (1860-1931) was a Victorian illustrator of books, usually of a fantastical or romantic nature. He is probably most well known for his illustrations for Andrew Lang's fairy story books. Speed is credited as the designer on the 1916 silent movie version of the novel She by H. Rider Haggard, which he had illustrated. George Gissing he was also the director of a number of early British silent films. Although his early works are naturalistic, he developed...

This book holds a Victorian era view of Italy that transports the reader to that earlier time. Gissing's "tour" provides a vivid account of southern Italy's glorious past coupled with an honest revelation of its poverty and hardships at the turn of the century. George Gissing was an English novelist, who wrote twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. George Gissing he was also the director of a number of early British silent films. Although his early works are naturalistic, he developed into one of the the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire,...

The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is a semi-fictional autobiographical work by George Gissing in which the author casts himself as the editor of the diary of a deceased acquaintance, selecting essays for posthumous publication. Observing "how suitable many of the reflections were to the month with which they were dated," he explains that he "hit upon the thought of dividing the little book into four chapters, named after the seasons." It was partly because of the seasonal arrangement, and Ryecroft's obvious love of the natural world, that the book gained widespread popularity in Japan,...

Veranilda: A Romance is a posthumous novel by English author George Gissing. The book was left incomplete at the time of Gissing's death and it was first published in 1904 by Archibald Constable and Company. As an old friend of Gissing, H.G. Wells was asked to write an introduction to Veranilda. Displeased with the piece Wells wrote, Gissing's relatives and literary executors then asked Frederic Harrison to write a substitute.Well's rejected preface was later published under the title "George Gissing: An Impression." George Robert Gissing (22 November 1857 - 28 December 1903) was an English...

Will Warburton: A Romance of Real Life was George Gissing's last novel. It was published in 1905, two years after Gissing's death. Will Warburton is a young gentleman of means, a man of commerce, who, losing everything in speculation, is forced into the life of a grocer, a thing he finds, at first, enormously tragic.Will keeps his fate secret from his friends and his family and lives a life of humiliation and privation. It is only when the woman with whom he is falling in love discovers he is a grocer, and throws him over, that Will realizes that there is no shame in being a grocer. George...